See now, in the US Iwouldn;t be shocked to see something like that at Burning Man, but as part of a real civic civil engineering project? Never. It's kind of sad that we don;t still have at least a small taste for whimsy and ornamentation in our utlitatarian structures. IF you ever go to the Arts and Industries Museum in DC you'll see an exhbit of hand tools displayed at the Cloumbian Exposition in Chicago around the turn fo the century and it's striking how much effort went into decorating and beautfiying even completely prosaic objects like screw drivers, hacksaws and hammers back then

factoryconnection:Chariset: It was designed by an American firm. Get your American city with a river to buy one and you can have one too.

It was designed by Americans to commemorate the liberation of the city of Da Nang from the... Americans. I guess they're officially "over it."

Really they were "over it", roughly 5 minutes after we left and Vietnam had to return to worrying about China being a bunch of dicks and invading. During my trips it seems most Vietnamese see the entire war as just business, they just happened to have the shiatty luck of hosting a US vs USSR proxy war. They don't take it personally like they do some other countries attempts to colonize/annex them.

Although they do like to park American military equipment in front of all their government buildings just to show what they did accomplish.

/If you're America have no fears about going to Vietnam, they're much to busy making life hell for any Chinese who visit to bother you

Magorn:See now, in the US Iwouldn;t be shocked to see something like that at Burning Man, but as part of a real civic civil engineering project? Never. It's kind of sad that we don;t still have at least a small taste for whimsy and ornamentation in our utlitatarian structures. IF you ever go to the Arts and Industries Museum in DC you'll see an exhbit of hand tools displayed at the Cloumbian Exposition in Chicago around the turn fo the century and it's striking how much effort went into decorating and beautfiying even completely prosaic objects like screw drivers, hacksaws and hammers back then

The light show in the tunnel at the Detroit airport is pretty cool. Definitely surprised me, in a "I'm surprised someone shelled out the cash for something with purely aesthetic value" way.

I suddenly find myself designing a bridge in my head. One that links, EZ Pass, a fire breathing dragon and Truck-a-saurus car crushing functionality together to create automated toll enforcement. It could also be fun to link it to a radar gun and pick off late night street racers assuming truck-a-saurus has enough functionality.

Magorn:IF you ever go to the Arts and Industries Museum in DC you'll see an exhbit of hand tools displayed at the Cloumbian Exposition in Chicago around the turn fo the century and it's striking how much effort went into decorating and beautfiying even completely prosaic objects like screw drivers, hacksaws and hammers back then

That's because back then, materials were expensive and labor was cheap.

I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the bridge. I'm here a week now... waiting for a mission... getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie builds a cool bridge, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter.

And unfortunately, like many things over there I expect that upkeep was never part of the proposal and just a few years from now the bridge will look kinda rough and there either won't be any money for cool flames or the gas delivery system will have been broken down and not been repaired.

I get the sad sometimes when I see really awesome artistic municipal endeavors over there that have just gone to pot in a few years.

Magorn:See now, in the US Iwouldn;t be shocked to see something like that at Burning Man, but as part of a real civic civil engineering project? Never. It's kind of sad that we don;t still have at least a small taste for whimsy and ornamentation in our utlitatarian structures. IF you ever go to the Arts and Industries Museum in DC you'll see an exhbit of hand tools displayed at the Cloumbian Exposition in Chicago around the turn fo the century and it's striking how much effort went into decorating and beautfiying even completely prosaic objects like screw drivers, hacksaws and hammers back then

I got 2 words to explain why we will probably never see anything like this bridge in America: Taxpayer Money

People flip out over necessary spending for public projects. Imagine the backlash for such an artistic display like this.

ha-ha-guy:factoryconnection: Chariset: It was designed by an American firm. Get your American city with a river to buy one and you can have one too.

It was designed by Americans to commemorate the liberation of the city of Da Nang from the... Americans. I guess they're officially "over it."

Really they were "over it", roughly 5 minutes after we left and Vietnam had to return to worrying about China being a bunch of dicks and invading. During my trips it seems most Vietnamese see the entire war as just business, they just happened to have the shiatty luck of hosting a US vs USSR proxy war. They don't take it personally like they do some other countries attempts to colonize/annex them.

Although they do like to park American military equipment in front of all their government buildings just to show what they did accomplish.

/If you're America have no fears about going to Vietnam, they're much to busy making life hell for any Chinese who visit to bother you

Yeah there is a lot of US business in Vietnam again. My dad wants to go there on a veterans tour one day. From what he has heard from other vets is that they were very friendly and hospitable towards the veterans and their families. Told dad I would go with him if he paid.

ha-ha-guy:factoryconnection: Chariset: It was designed by an American firm. Get your American city with a river to buy one and you can have one too.

It was designed by Americans to commemorate the liberation of the city of Da Nang from the... Americans. I guess they're officially "over it."

Really they were "over it", roughly 5 minutes after we left and Vietnam had to return to worrying about China being a bunch of dicks and invading. During my trips it seems most Vietnamese see the entire war as just business, they just happened to have the shiatty luck of hosting a US vs USSR proxy war. They don't take it personally like they do some other countries attempts to colonize/annex them.

Although they do like to park American military equipment in front of all their government buildings just to show what they did accomplish.

/If you're America have no fears about going to Vietnam, they're much to busy making life hell for any Chinese who visit to bother you

Well, a lot of that depends on the generation and how much a person's family was personally affected by the war. College kids and younger are all too young to have any personal experience--heck, my university students when I lived there were too young to realize that only getting the Internet in the early '90s didn't make Vietnam backwards because nobody had it before then. The fact that they won goes a long way to helping move past it. For a country that has as many thousands of years of history as Vietnam has, and who, along with Afghanistan, have a propensity for not staying conquered--even if it takes a thousand years to drive out the conquerors--they've got an ability to put things in historical perspective.

I loved living there, and I'd move back in a heartbeat after I finish law school if I were to find a job that would make me enough to pay off my student loans. Also, I clearly need to go back now so I can go check out this new bridge in Da Nang.

BafflerMeal:And unfortunately, like many things over there I expect that upkeep was never part of the proposal and just a few years from now the bridge will look kinda rough and there either won't be any money for cool flames or the gas delivery system will have been broken down and not been repaired.

I get the sad sometimes when I see really awesome artistic municipal endeavors over there that have just gone to pot in a few years.

Nah, Vietnam likes things that look pretty/artistic/poetic, this is the kind of thing where they'll probably stick to the upkeep.

rynthetyn:BafflerMeal: And unfortunately, like many things over there I expect that upkeep was never part of the proposal and just a few years from now the bridge will look kinda rough and there either won't be any money for cool flames or the gas delivery system will have been broken down and not been repaired.

I get the sad sometimes when I see really awesome artistic municipal endeavors over there that have just gone to pot in a few years.

Nah, Vietnam likes things that look pretty/artistic/poetic, this is the kind of thing where they'll probably stick to the upkeep.

The quality of new construction in Saigon is amazing when you consider the country's GDP and all that. With some of the new high rise buildings they're putting up along the Mekong you can see how someone sat down and spent time ensuring they'd go well with the classic French architecture. As opposed to other industrial countries that just back up the cement mixer and start building boxes..

Kinda sad to me that the majority of us still think of a war that took place half a century ago when we think of Vietnam. I know it's what I was thinking about as I flew there for the first time, five years ago.

Turns out that most people in Vietnam don't think about that war.

Too bad all of the foreign investment (especially from China) hit so fast and hard. In the five years I've been going back, I've seen so many things I love about Saigon and Hanoi change for the worse. Not the least of which being the quality of the air, food and water, which is all now polluted.

ha-ha-guy:rynthetyn: BafflerMeal: And unfortunately, like many things over there I expect that upkeep was never part of the proposal and just a few years from now the bridge will look kinda rough and there either won't be any money for cool flames or the gas delivery system will have been broken down and not been repaired.

I get the sad sometimes when I see really awesome artistic municipal endeavors over there that have just gone to pot in a few years.

Nah, Vietnam likes things that look pretty/artistic/poetic, this is the kind of thing where they'll probably stick to the upkeep.

The quality of new construction in Saigon is amazing when you consider the country's GDP and all that. With some of the new high rise buildings they're putting up along the Mekong you can see how someone sat down and spent time ensuring they'd go well with the classic French architecture. As opposed to other industrial countries that just back up the cement mixer and start building boxes..

Yeah, the great irony is that culturally Vietnam has far more in common with places like France that build things to both last and look nice than they do with the Soviets who did a lot of the post-war rebuilding. They don't like the cheap concrete box architecture. Actually, they don't really like cheap in general--I can't count how many times I've been told variations about how the only reason people buy anything made in China is if they can't afford the alternatives because they think China makes cheap crap that doesn't last.

ha-ha-guy:factoryconnection: Chariset: It was designed by an American firm. Get your American city with a river to buy one and you can have one too.

It was designed by Americans to commemorate the liberation of the city of Da Nang from the... Americans. I guess they're officially "over it."

Really they were "over it", roughly 5 minutes after we left and Vietnam had to return to worrying about China being a bunch of dicks and invading. During my trips it seems most Vietnamese see the entire war as just business, they just happened to have the shiatty luck of hosting a US vs USSR proxy war. They don't take it personally like they do some other countries attempts to colonize/annex them.

Although they do like to park American military equipment in front of all their government buildings just to show what they did accomplish.

/If you're America have no fears about going to Vietnam, they're much to busy making life hell for any Chinese who visit to bother you

Do you mean 1980? When China wanted to "teach Vietnam a lesson" for ending the Khmer Rouge genocide after they dared to attack VN in 1979? THAT 1980? When the Vietnamese kicked PLA butt so severely that they quit after 16 days with their tails between their legs? That China?

Kevin72:ha-ha-guy: factoryconnection: Chariset: It was designed by an American firm. Get your American city with a river to buy one and you can have one too.

It was designed by Americans to commemorate the liberation of the city of Da Nang from the... Americans. I guess they're officially "over it."

Really they were "over it", roughly 5 minutes after we left and Vietnam had to return to worrying about China being a bunch of dicks and invading. During my trips it seems most Vietnamese see the entire war as just business, they just happened to have the shiatty luck of hosting a US vs USSR proxy war. They don't take it personally like they do some other countries attempts to colonize/annex them.

Although they do like to park American military equipment in front of all their government buildings just to show what they did accomplish.

/If you're America have no fears about going to Vietnam, they're much to busy making life hell for any Chinese who visit to bother you

Do you mean 1980? When China wanted to "teach Vietnam a lesson" for ending the Khmer Rouge genocide after they dared to attack VN in 1979? THAT 1980? When the Vietnamese kicked PLA butt so severely that they quit after 16 days with their tails between their legs? That China?

If you don't think that Vietnam is still worried about China even though they kicked their asses back then, I've got a fire breathing dragon bridge to sell you. Vietnam doesn't trust China in the slightest--part of the reason for the ass kicking they gave China was because they're like, "we beat the French, we beat the Japanese, we beat the Americans, but last time China invaded it took us a thousand years to get rid of them and we aren't going to do that again," Seriously, it's been over a thousand years since they kicked the Chinese out and that's still a bigger sore point than the French colonial era or the American war.

The whole reason that Vietnam allied itself with the Soviets and caused the US to freak out about the domino theory to begin with was because they needed some big power to play against the Chinese and the US wasn't interested. It's not an accident that they began normalizing relations with the US right after the Soviet Union broke up, it's because they need a superpower to be friends with that's not China. People in Vietnam are perpetually pissed at China for one thing or another (though mostly the Spratley islands shenanigans), want to rename the South China Sea the "Southeast Asia Sea," kind of freaked out when ASEAN couldn't come to an agreement about China during their Cambodia meetings last summer because of China's influence on Cambodia, and really don't trust China at all. In fact, their current foreign policy is pretty much to try to play the US and China off each other for their own national security benefit (which I hope the US is smart enough to realize--I picked up on that because I taught at their diplomatic school).

rynthetyn:"we beat the French, we beat the Japanese, we beat the Americans, but last time China invaded it took us a thousand years to get rid of them and we aren't going to do that again,"

There are actually writings where Ho Chi Minh talks about accepting French colonial rule or American puppet state status post WWII on the grounds it was better than dealing with the Chinese. He said something that translates roughly as "I'd rather smell French shiat for 250 more years than eat Chinese shiat for 1000 years." He was worried because the Allies were talking about sending a Chinese Army into Vietnam to push the Japanese out and there were concerns said Chinese Army would never leave. So Hop Chi Minh and others were considering having the Viet Minh actually throw their support behind an American amphibious invasion of Vietnam on the grounds it was much better to have an American Army hanging around than other options.

/the Sino-Vietnam border is the second most militarized border in the world after the Korean DMZ//there are currently American troops in Vietnam, just there to help with Agent Orange cleanup, but Vietnam has welcomed American troops back/they've also offered us the use of Cam Ranh Bay, but we declined, so now they're trying to get the Russian Navy to visit again